Ellen Fitzpatrick “Letters to Jackie”

In late 1963 a nation grieving over the loss of a charismatic leader picked up pen and paper and wrote letters to the young widow he left behind. By the thousands — by the tens of thousands — they wrote letters, to Jacqueline Kennedy. More than 800 thousand letters came in within seven weeks of John F. Kennedy’s death. A year and a half later, there were over a million and a half.

And they all went straight into storage.

For 46 years the letters remained virtually untouched. Historian Ellen Fitzpatrick obtained permission to examine them, copy about 250 of them, and put them into a book called “Letters to Jackie.”

Listen to Ellen Fitzpatrick

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